


Vault of Heaven

by orphan_account



Series: Season 14 Codas [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Claustrophobia, Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s14e12 Prophet and Loss, Kissing, M/M, Season/Series 14, Season/Series 14 Spoilers, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 12:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17622476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dean promised that he’d try to find another way, and he meant it when he said that he wanted to keep fighting, but if theycan’tfind a better way, then Dean will climb into that fucking box. And he will never. Get. Out.No clean, clear air. No big empty bowl of Kansas sky. No nothing.





	Vault of Heaven

It’s too fucking cold to be sneaking out in the middle of the night but Dean does it anyway, bundling up in a wool coat and gloves and even one of those fugly hats that Sam failed to knit during his short-lived crafty phase. At least it’s not fucking snowing, and the air out here’s as still as the last breath caught in a dying man’s chest, so there’s no windchill to contend with. Yeah, Dean can swing this.

The field behind the bunker is sparse and scrubby, and Sam always talks about cultivating a vegetable garden back here to enable his salad addiction even though the soil’s pH levels are absolute shit (they didn’t even have to fiddle with any fancy agricultural equipment to figure that out; Cas just stuck a finger in the dirt one day and declared the soil too iron deficient for Sam’s purposes). What matters, though, is that the field’s flat and open the way all fields in Kansas are, nothing between the ground and the sky but cold, empty air.

Dean’s coat and gloves and fugly hat are enough to keep him warm for the first few minutes of exposure, but he knew before he tromped out here that he’d need more than that to stave off frostbite and hypothermia, so he came prepared with two flannel blankets folded over the crook of his arm. He lays the first blanket out on the bumpy ground, smoothing the corners before settling down on top of it and spreading the second blanket out over his legs and torso, tucking it up around his chin. He gets one arm wedged beneath his head as a makeshift pillow, tucks the other arm beneath the blanket, and lets his eyes drift shut.

Dean didn’t come out here to stargaze, not that he could if he wanted to. The sky’s overcast tonight, and even if it wasn’t, the light pollution would blot out all but the brightest of stars. It’s not as bad in Lebanon as it is in proper cities, the light pollution, but it’s still more than you’d get out in the absolute ass crack of nowhere.

Like he said, though. He didn’t come out here to stargaze.  

It’s funny, the way you can just _feel_ how exposed you are even with your eyes shut. It shouldn’t be possible to feel empty space, but Dean can, can feel the absence of walls shutting him in. Dean likes his room in the bunker, loves it, even, but he’s been shutting himself up in there a little too often lately, between brooding over his inevitable doom and avoiding the surplus of strange hunters clogging his home’s hallways. To be honest, he’s starting to go a little stir crazy.  

More than that, though—

Dean’s train of thought doesn’t even make it to the station, slowing down on its tracks at the distant but clear sound of feet crunching through the frosted grass. Dean’s ears pull up, the back of his neck prickles, and his empty hands flex around weapons that aren’t there. He’s got a knife in his boot and a gun in his waistband, but after another couple seconds of listening to the grass crunch, he relaxes as much as he ever does. He knows the rhythm of those footsteps, could identify them in his fucking sleep.

The footsteps stop at the edge of Dean’s blankets, and Dean’s mouth twitches into a sardonic smile. He doesn’t have to see Cas’s face to know that the guy’s frowning at him something fierce.

“You gonna list every human in the history of forever that’s died of exposure, or are you gonna get down here and help keep me warm?” Dean pats around blindly and lifts the corner of the blanket, shivering at the lick of cold air that slithers into the warm little nest he’s built for himself. “Any fucking day now.”

Cas sighs, but when Dean slits his eyes open to watch him, it’s to the sight of Cas already hunkering down on his knees. Dean scoots over and lifts the blanket higher, and when Cas’s side comes up flush with his, he doesn’t squirm any farther away. Cas runs hotter than most people do, probably on account of all that divine Grace simmering within the confines of his vessel, and it’s like cuddling up to a walking, talking space heater. What kind of idiot would pull _away_ from that?

“Should I ask you what you’re doing sleeping outdoors in the middle of the night in late January? Or do I not want to know?”

Dean’s jaw cracks on a yawn at the mention of sleep, but he smacks his lips and forces his eyes all the way open, saying, “February. It’s past midnight, so technically it’s February. And m’not sleeping.”

Until Cas, Dean had never met anyone who could make _silence_ sound unimpressed, but there you go.

Dean squirms, pulling the blanket up high beneath his chin and maybe, accidentally pressing up more firmly against Cas. The guy’s warm, okay? And Dean’s nose is starting to get numb.  

“I just.” Dean licks his lips and immediately regrets it when his saliva touches the air and cools on his skin. “I just, I dunno. I’ve been spending too much time in my room whenever I’m home these days, you know? Guess I’m getting a little claustrophobic.”

There’s a beat of silence as Cas considers this, and then he says, halting but genuine, “We could…ask the others to leave? The bunker was never meant to be a permanent home for them regardless, so—”

“Nah,” Dean says immediately, even though the selfish part of him really, really wants to take Cas up on his suggestion. “Nah, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to them, I just. I needed to get out for a while.”

“Did you want to be alone?” Cas asks, and Dean feels a bolt of panic when he starts to shift like he’s going to pull away. “I could—”

Dean gropes around under the blanket until he can get his fingers locked around Cas’s wrist, the coarse fabric of his overcoat scratching Dean’s palm. A grip this tight would hurt anyone else, but not Cas. Cas can take anything Dean has to give him and then some.

“No,” Dean says, voice a little too thin with panic for his liking. He clears his throat and tries for a manlier register. “No, you’re fine. If you wanna stay, then stay.”

Cas stays. Cas stays, and then he says, “Are you. Is there more to this venture than cabin fever?” Dean’s silent for a couple seconds too long, barely even breathing, and Cas hastens to add, “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Dean likes that about Cas. Sam’s heart is usually in the right place when he asks Dean to talk to him about his feelings, but the kid doesn’t know when not to push. Sometimes that’s what Dean needs, but sometimes it makes him want to crawl out of his own skin just to escape the pressure of his baby brother’s looming disappointment. Cas is more like Dean. Cas, like Dean, will usually open up an avenue and just let it sit there, waiting until Dean’s ready to spill his guts. Cas has been around forever, _literally_ forever. He knows how to wait.

And since Cas is doing Dean that kindness, Dean figures he owes it to Cas to try, especially after seeing the look he put on Cas’s face back at the hospital.

“I.” Dean tries to push the words he wants to say out of his throat. He tries, but they crowd his mouth and sit like stones on his tongue, fit to choke him. “Y'know, I wasn’t kidding about the whole claustrophobia thing. I mean. It doesn’t always flare up, but when it does. And lately, it’s just. Fuck.” _Fuck_.

Because, see, here’s the thing. Dean promised Sam and Cas that he’d try to find another way, but until that nebulous other way is found, he’s still going to be staring down the barrel of _Angel_ ’s season three finale, and he meant it when he said that he wanted to keep fighting, but if they can’t. If they can’t find a better way, then Dean. Will climb into that fucking box. And he will never. Get. Out.

No clean, clear air. No big empty bowl of Kansas sky. No nothing.

And it won’t even be the first time he’s been trapped in a box, which is kinda funny in a morbid, not funny at all sort of way. But this box. This box won’t be like the plywood coffin he woke up in when Cas yanked him out of Hell. He can scratch and scratch and scratch at the lid until his fingers bleed and his nails break off, but it won’t get him anywhere. There won’t be any popping out of the turned earth of his own grave this time, and there won’t be an angel waiting in the wings to raise him from perdition.

Dean’s breath is coming thin and uneven and he doesn’t even know when that happened, but Cas. Cas turns over onto his side, wrist sliding out of Dean’s loosened grip, and puts one big broad hand on Dean’s chest, right there, right over his galloping heart, and Dean. Dean comes down, backs away from the ledge of a panic attack, just like that. Just from having Cas soothe him like a spooked horse.

Dean doesn’t know if it’s the angel mojo or if it’s just Cas that did that. Just Cas and the weird chokehold he’s had on Dean from day one.  

“I never did apologize,” Cas says, slow and thoughtful, lips grazing Dean’s ear, “for leaving you to claw your way out of that coffin.”

Dean’s fingertips are still raw and sore from scratching his way out of that underwater nightmare. From gouging ribbons into that motel room’s wall. He doesn’t say anything.

“My orders were to leave you there as is,” Cas goes on, “and to contact you once you’d dug yourself free. But, Dean, I wouldn’t have left you to suffocate in there. Please believe me.”

Dean finally manages to say something, and, naturally, it comes out snarky. “Yeah, sure. Because the Host wanted me alive. Can’t pop an archangel into a corpse.”

He doesn’t exactly flinch on the word ‘archangel,’ but it’s a near thing.

Cas’s fingers flex against Dean’s sternum. “Yes,” he allows. “But you were—are—my charge. I wouldn’t have allowed any harm to befall you.”

Dean thinks back to that first year fresh from the Pit, to all those times he could’ve used an angel on his shoulder and got fuck all instead, but he doesn’t say anything. Cas was still playing the good little soldier back then. He could only do what the Host allowed him to do, and in the end, he was on Dean’s team when Dean needed him most. That counts for something. Hell, that counts for _everything_.

Dean flops over onto his side, knees knocking into Cas’s, and looks at Cas from up close, so close that he almost has to cross his eyes to keep the sharp angles of Cas’s face in focus. He thinks of the hospital, of Cas in his Dr. Sexy coat telling Dean to fuck himself in as many words, and of how his eyes had trailed down to Cas’s mouth almost of their own volition. Of what could’ve happened, of the simmering hurt and anger that could’ve reached a boiling point had Sam not walked in on them when he did.

Dean thinks: _I could lose this. I’m_ going _to lose this._

And he. Just kind of. Nudges his mouth against Cas’s. He holds his breath, and there’s this fraught second where Cas just sort of lies there and Dean’s heart seizes up with anxiety, but then Cas makes a shocked sound and fucking _melts_ against him.  

It’s kind of awkward, kissing on their sides like this, faces mashed against the scratchy blanket, but Dean does not even give a single fuck. Cas keeps making these little needy noises against Dean’s mouth like he can’t even help himself, like he wants Dean that bad and doesn’t care who knows it, and Dean loves it, he _loves it_.

He hooks his fingers in the knot of Cas’s stupid backwards tie and holds him still, holds him close. He shoves his other arm beneath Cas and palms the nape of his neck, fingers scratching through his hair, and Cas arches into the touch like a goddamn cat. Cas clings to Dean, all octopus arms, but Dean doesn’t feel suffocated, doesn’t feel claustrophobic. All he feels is arousal and affection and _relief_.

Cas’s permastubble keeps chafing at Dean’s chin, but Dean doesn’t mind. He likes a little whisker burn. What he does mind, though, is not being able to breathe, so he angles his face away from Cas’s and takes a big gulp of frosted air. Cas pants wetly against Dean’s cheek like he even needs to breathe. Maybe it’s habit. Maybe he’s just so overwhelmed that he forgot he doesn’t have to.  

But then Cas shoves Dean’s fugly hat off his head. He weaves his fingers into Dean’s hair where it’s longest and _pulls_ , glaring right into Dean’s eyes.

“This isn’t a goodbye,” Cas tells him, voice rumbling with angelic authority.  

It’s kinda scary and kinda hot, and Dean blurts out an automatic, “All right,” before he even knows what he’s saying.

Jesus. Is this what it’s like to be whipped? Oh, god. He hasn’t even gotten any yet and he’s already whipped; _is that normal_?

The fingers in Dean’s hair tighten, and Dean valiantly doesn’t whine. “I mean it, Dean.”

Dean rolls his eyes to cover up how insanely hot he finds Cas in this moment. “Christ. If looks could smite.”

“Dean.”

“I said ‘all right,’ didn’t I?” Dean bites out, impatient now. They could be kissing. They could be doing a lot of things. Okay, maybe not _all_ the things, since they’re outdoors in the freezing fucking cold, but some things. “Seriously, dude. Put away the smiting face.”

The hard line of Cas’s mouth softens, gradually. Dean strains forward to kiss it, and Cas lets him. The tight grip in Dean’s hair soothes into a caress.

“You’re not going into another box,” Cas tells him. “Never again. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Cas sounds so sure, so confident in his ability to pull Dean out of every single fire there is, that Dean half believes him.

Dean rolls Cas over onto his back, and Cas allows himself to be manhandled, allows Dean to mold him like putty and climb on top of him. Cas is warm beneath him, and the sky is cold above him, and Dean’s not going back into a box. Not tonight, anyway.

Maybe—and this is a big fucking _maybe_ —maybe not ever.


End file.
